The Power of Persistence

Today we were out walking in Lujiazui, pushing our double decker pram with two screaming kids strapped in, screaming because neither wanted to be in there.  Truth be told, Didi is really a bit too big now for the bottom seat and doesn't like it in there any more, but Jie Jie isn't a reliable enough long distance walker for us to have no pram, or only a single seater.  So for local trips we recently bought a bike trailer which also can be pushed as a buggy, but I digress...

Coming out of the Shanghai World Financial Centre, where we had been to pick up some photos, a friendly happy man came racing up to us and asked if we wanted to buy a 'Rolex' for 100RMB, when we declined with barely a glance and kept walking he pulled out another Rolex and said 'Two for 100'.  We looked at each other and nodded, but again declined with barely a glance and continued on our way.

With no positive feedback from us, at all, there were 'Four for 100', so bear in mind the cost of the watches that we didn't want anyway, had just gone from 100RMB to 25RMB each in less than 2 minutes!  Still no interest, but we were now smiling.

We then crossed the road, and he crossed with us, and in the middle of the road he pulled out a 'his and hers' set... well, now the odds got better - all six for 100RMB!!  Now, secretly, I have long harboured a his and hers watches set fantasy, all the way back to the Sale of the Century giftshop days!  And these watches had black dials, with a diamond at each hour.  And they are Rolexes.

I glanced at Mike and without further inspection, the man said "Two for 30" - to be honest I couldn't even be bothered pushing harder.  So turned to him and had a look at the his and hers set, and then he pulled out a white face set, but I took the black ones, and he helped me put it on, then gave Mike his, and took his 30RMB or AUD$4.30.

We walked off quite chuffed with our new bargain matching watches, only to read the small print on the watch face... both are Rolex Oyster Perpetual Watches, and both are "Superlative Chrcnometer Offictally Certified"... but you have to get up close!!   You even have to be quite observant to see it here - right?

Happy New Year

We are in Melbourne.  We have been here since mid-December.  We will be here until the end of January, but Mike is going back to China for 3 weeks before coming back for Chinese New Year.  The kids and I came over 4 days before Mike to save a bit on airfares. Compared to my first solo flights with two kids this was a breeze - the kids did what they were told, stayed with me and most importantly slept for about 6 hours in flight!!

We had a lovely Christmas, with delicious foods and super spoiled with lots of presents.  It has been fantastic catching up with everyone.  The kids have loved living in a house, and being able to just step outside onto the plush lawn.  They spend all day running around, getting dirty and playing.  They are being well looked after by grandparents, who love having them around.

It is summer in Melbourne, so we are supposed to be escaping the winter chill of Shanghai.  Unfortunately though we have been averaging only about 6 degrees warmer than Shanghai... the other night it was 7 degrees in Shanghai, and only 10 degrees here...  of course last night it was 40 ish until the wee hours. So lucky that was the night we chose to spend with friends drinking cocktails, slapping mozzies and seeing in the new year!!

Happy New Year!!  Hope 2011 is everything you want it to be!!

It's beginning to feel a bit like Christmas...

Because we are leaving Shanghai to have Christmas in Melbourne in about 3 weeks, I decided that we needed to get our Christmas decorations up early, so we could enjoy a bit of festivity in our own home!  So last weekend, yes mid-November, the decorations went up in our house!  It's lovely to have our wreath on the front door and the stockings hung.  I have added Santa and snowman cushions to our lounge, much to the kids delight.

And Didi is wearing these delightful warm and toasty handmedown pyjamas - I just want to cuddle him every time I see him in them.  And the first time he wore them, he kept looking at his arms and saying 'Wow'.  I especially liked it when he teamed them with my pink ugg boots, even though it made walking a bit tricky!!

It wasn't quite so spontaneous though, as last week with my aunt and some friends we visited a Christmas market stall in the Yu Yuan Bazaar. I know it shouldn't surprise me anymore, but the amount of STUFF is incredible!!  I bought 2 cute little glittery twiggy Christmas trees (about 40cm tall), 4 Christmas pictures - cardboard cutouts and one mantle decoration (above stockings in top picture), all for less than 100RMB (AUD15).

The best bit about the decorations is we now have Santa looking down on us from a number of different spots around the house... and let me tell you - he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!!

Little Girls' Dream Store

So just who are these glamorous girls?  You'd be forgiven for thinking it was a line up for some supermodel shoot, but these girls are Barbies showing off the LBD, or little black dress line!

Only in Shanghai, is there a Barbie store.  Five glorious levels of Barbie - you wouldn't think it was possible, but hey.  Top floor starts with the Barbie Cafe, a retro 50s style diner, with exquisite chocolates as well, and reasonable milkshakes.  As you work your way down, there is the spa (yes for you and your Barbie), adult sized Barbie style clothes, then down a spiral staircase lined with showcases each housing one Barbie, all dressed in pink - just like this one, and you can see how many others there are surrounding her:

Then there is the toy store, where little girls (and big girls) can ooh and aah over all the Barbies they could possibly desire - Dr Barbie, Hairdresser Barbie, Dolphin Trainer Barbie and the list goes on and on and on.  

Why were we there?  Well, remember the recent Daddy Daughter Dance, well the Shanghai Barbie Flagship Store gave all the daughters a voucher to pick up one of the Shanghai Flagship Barbies each, valued at 249RMB - pretty generous really.  So we were there to cash in!  And we were in the area to visit the French Concession with my aunt (Mum's little sister) who is visiting this week.

It really is overwhelming how many Barbies there were, and how much accessorisation is possible, both for your doll and yourself, adult or child.  I wondered whether for the next Daddy Daughter Dance we should splash out and buy Jie Jie an evening dress with a sash from the Barbie range.

Jie Jie was pretty excited by her new Shanghai Barbie - who does look a bit Chinese, with long black hair, dark eyes and carries a chihuahua in a patent silver bag, and came with a change of clothes with an I Heart Shanghai shirt!

She carried her proudly the full length of Huaihai Zhong Lu, all the way to lunch at Di Shui Dong - hot and spicy Hunan cuisine, and here is showing her off at the table!

Just to confirm that Shanghai isn't only over the top for children, the following picture is a building sized Louis Vuitton suitcase housing, you guessed it, the Louis Vuitton (originals) store!!

Daddy Daughter Dance

On Saturday night, my little Jie Jie had her first ever school dance and I was such a proud Mum! I thought she looked beautiful, and I thoroughly approved of her date, sworn protector and guardian forever - dearest Daddy!  Given that she's only three and a half, a fairy princess dress was perfect choice of couture.  She loved the little feathery butterflies on the headband and wand, and while you can't see it, she was also very excited to have glitter on her face, and LIPSTICK!!!

Now, this Dance wasn't just in the school gym... it was at the Pudong Inter Continental Hotel.  It wasn't just hot dogs and punch either, it was a full buffet dinner!  Of course Jie Jie ate nothing, and subsequently also prevented Daddy from eating by running amok.

The Daddies could all stand around and talk about sport or computers, or chase their girls to ensure good behaviour!!

There were loads of activities for all the girls to do... painting nails, temporary tattoos and of course making masks...

This is one of Jie Jie's good friends from school - don't they look cute??  And so grown up??

Where's the adventure gone?

When we first moved to Shanghai everything was different.  And by different, I mean compared to home.  We would look in amazement at food stalls, markets, 'designer' bags, T-shirts, chopsticks, activities, kites, traffic and so on, amazed at what was happening.  We would go to the supermarket, Carrefour, and be agog at the quantity of stuff, the piles of slippers, plasticware, noodles, mobile phones, TVs, soy sauces and so on; we would be a combination of fascinated and disgusted by the meat handling techniques and storage conditions.  We would try, a bit tentatively, whatever they were sampling in the supermarket that day, usually a dumpling of some description, or we would shake our head and say no.

We couldn't buy a lot of imported home comforts.  Weetabix (the UK version of Weet Bix) were incredibly overpriced.  There were only a couple of stores which were very expensive but specialised in imported food stuffs, mostly American junk food, like Goldfish.  Vegemite was not available.  But Bega cheese was.  Quality was variable.

Our first years in Shanghai meant that we branched out and tried new foods.  We cooked in a wok (before I had an ayi who cooked for us) and ate our version of stir fry and rice because that was what was available.

Now, there are imported food stores all over, and Carrefour's range of imported goods has increased out of mind - Tim Tams are almost always in stock.  Still no Vegemite though.

This week I was a bit saddened, on a quick trip to Carrefour to see that in the middle of the store there was a taste test for Barilla Pasta and Sauce - is this now mainstream Chinese cuisine?  It wasn't even in the imported goods section, it was smack bang in the middle of the Chinese groceries.  And it wasn't expensive, dollar for yuan I think it would have cost the same in Sydney!

That wasn't the end of it though... I went through the newly renovated meat section where hygiene has improved out of sight in the last two years, and into the fresh produce section.  It was there that I almost burst into tears... after 2 years of having lettuces of dubious quality, but excellent cherry tomatoes to rival Italy, I found in a REFRIGERATOR the following...

A pre-mixed salad!!
Can you read what is written in ENGLISH?  It says Baby Leaf and Ready to Eat!!!  I was sceptical, but I bought it.  Bargain selling two for the price of one - AUD$1.20 total!!  Not much to lose if no good.


When I got home I opened it up, found fresh clean lettuce, still crispy even.  Sliced red capsicum, no slimy sides, cherry tomatoes, sesame mayonnaise dressing and a little fork.

It was better than anything I've ever bought for a cheap lunch from Coles Express at Wynyard!

But I was a little sad... I want to be living in China for the experience.  I want the adventure to keep going...

Expo in Mid-Autumn

Last Wednesday was mid-Autumn festival, or Moon Cake Day!  We all had a day off school and a single day of holiday mid-week.  The Chinese do it a bit differently though, and have Wednesday off school and work too, but to make it a decent break agree to have Thursday and Friday as holidays too, and then work on the next Saturday and Sunday.  So basically, yesterday was a working day that we weren't working!  So knowing that we had 3 more visits to Expo on our 7 day pass, and that Expo is over at the end of October, we thought 'let's go today' - short notice, little preparation - excellent!!

On Wednesday (the holiday) Expo attendance had been a record high of 631,200 people!  But yesterday we were there with only 353,800 people.  The weather was perfect... we have passed our hot and sticky summer and enjoyed a comfortable day in the early 20s.  And this morning, we have woken up to pouring rain... so feel super smart!!

I packed a quick lunch, while Mike patched a puncture in the pram wheel and then grabbed other supplies for the day, and headed down to the gate, and luck was on our side, there was an Expo Taxi waiting!!  In we jumped!!

Arriving at Expo, we could sense it was going to be a nice calm day.

We then decided we were hungry, and discussed what we wanted to eat... we agreed on Mexican, but from standing here looking at the China Pavillion, the Mexico Pavillion was seriously the furthest possible pavillion away, and still on the Pudong side!  So we headed in that general direction with the intention of visiting anything we could along the way... 

First pavillion for the day was New Zealand.  We both feel a bit like honorary Kiwis at times as we both work them closely, and have loads of Kiwi neighbours here!  The queue was moving very freely, and while we were queuing, we were fortunate to be there while the Haka was performed.  Jie Jie was very taken with their tongues!  Inside the pavillion was like a tour through the cities by going through private homes and businesses, and then into the stunning countryside of NZ. 

Next we were walking past Thailand, and they had our first 'Easy Access' queue of the day... we went straight down, and bypassed most of the queue.  Aaah, the benefit of having a pram, and carrying a baby!!  We were very excited because we actually will be in Thailand this time next week!!  So thought it was a good opportunity to have a look.  Their pavillion was 3 rooms, which you were moved through methodically, because there was a film in each.  The first one was great, all pictures of the cities and the beaches (Hello Koh Samui!) and then history, and finally another tour of the country, but IN 3D!!!!  Jie Jie was so cute, and jumped about a metre when a shark suddenly swam out of the screen.  The last line, was 'Come and visit soon' - we said 'Oh, OK'.

After that we knew we had to eat, but we were still so far from Mexico... so we went to the Belgian Beer Cafe, and had a Hoegaarten and hot chips with mayonnaise.  Didi fell asleep on the way.  Jie Jie loved the hot chips so much that she said she wanted more... by this stage the queue was really long, so I gave her some money and she managed to walk right to the front of the line, hand over her money (the counter is about 6 foot high), and then be given her cone of hot chips... she had quite a crowd of admirers, and nobody seemed to object with her version of queuing.

While Didi was still asleep we went and had another look at the beautiful Little Mermaid from Denmark,  her pool is so tranquil, and Jie Jie really did love seeing her.  Then through Slovenia, which had a book theme, and softly coloured illuminated walls which changed colour gently... oh, and a 'Terracotta Warrior' of Novak Djokovich (the tennis player).

Finally we got to Mexico... another nice quick entrance opened up again because of our pram... first room had a 5 min movie showing clips around Mexico, then directed through an interesting display of art, relics and an enormous altar with a Virgin Mary in the middle.  We went to the restaurant, but not starving any more so had some corn chips with guacamole and Mike and I had a beef and tequila (what else) taco each.  We paid, got our change, left the restaurant and getting ready to leave the pavillion, when the waitress came back to us and asked us to swap the 100RMB note we had 'used' to pay for our snack... I asked why, and she showed me that the note was missing a corner.  I asked her how she knew it was ours, and why they hadn't picked it up immediately, and she assured me it was ours.  I told her she couldn't prove it was ours and it was her problem, Mike was quickly checking all his other notes to check that he didn't actually have a 'bad batch', and said sorry, there was no way we were swapping their bad note with one of our good ones.  We hadn't noticed it had a corner missing, so we hadn't tried to be deceitful, and we seriously had no proof that they hadn't swapped it anyway.  Some people I know, say Mexicans are dodgy.... maybe it's true!

After Mexico we went through the South American Countries pavillion, and visited mini-pavillions of Uruguay, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay, Dominican Republic and probably a couple more.  There were stages everywhere in this big pavillion, and each time Jie Jie and Didi jumped up and started entertaining.  It really was funny, and always attracted a big crowd!  After all the dancing and performing, Jie Jie finally fell asleep in the pram!!

Second time round for me at the Australia Pavillion, and it was better than I remembered.  We completely skipped the queue, and went to the passport holders line, and in front of us were a bunch of 'Chinese' people showing Australian passports, and trying to get their extended families in, the guy supervising allowed the 6 people with passports in, but not the rest.  Then he looked at us asked where we were from, we responded, and they just waved us in, apparently didn't want or need ID, lucky as we didn't have passports with us, but I was ready to show my NSW Drivers License.  I think I wasn't very impressed the first time I was there, because it was my very first pavillion ever, and I didn't know what to expect.  This time, I was impressed with the show, and the display on the way up (I still thought the sculptures were ugly, but maybe that's just personal opinion).  There was an old guy working there, and I asked him if he knew the result of the Pies and Saints Grand Final... he said it was a draw and they were replaying it next weekend.  I said to him that he must be having me on!!  Then another staff member said the same thing... and I still didn't believe it so had to text Dad to check.

We didn't realise quite how long she was going to sleep for but we visited Finland, Greece, Norway and Australia, managed to leave Expo and catch a taxi all while she did.  We had a great day, and still have so much more to see!!!  Will we get there again?

Family Structure

One of the interesting things we experienced on our trip was when Jie Jie decided she 'needed' a family of yaks to take home.  In Shangri-La, yaks were the predominant farming animal, and indeed frequent supplier on menus - yak steak and yak yoghurt... boy, I wish we could get the yak yoghurt here - so delicious!!

Anyway, in all the souvenir shops there were these ornamental, well they weren't toys, yaks in varying sizes.  Jie Jie was insistent that she needed a yak, and after buying the first yak continued to wheedle and whine telling us she needed a whole family.  So we went forth and bought the rest of the family, in our case, 2 parent yaks and one baby brother yak, having already purchased the big sister yak.

But, have we lived in China too long?  The family apparently wasn't finished, because she also needed an ayi yak!  We opted not to buy an ayi yak as we ended up convincing her that she only needed a yak family for those who were there on holiday now and who slept at our house every day!

Back home however, she happens to have five 'Little Ponies' and subsequently I have heard her turning those into a Pony Family, complete with ayi pony!

End of the holidays

Since arriving home from holidays it has been non-stop.  Mike's parents arrived for a two and a half week stay and have loved seeing how much the kids have grown in the last year!

The summer has been really hot.  We've had a stack of days where the temperature has been over 40 - and you really just cannot move.  We've had the air conditioning pumping non-stop, and have flaked out most afternoons, or gone swimming.

I have been to the staff induction week as I am starting another student placement at my school on the first day of term, next week.  Mike has been busy getting ready for the next school year.  There's so much work for both of us, and so little time.

Jie Jie starts school again on Tuesday, and is going into Nursery.  She's three and a half, and will be at school for full days - 8.30 - 3pm.... can't believe it, such a long day for such a little person.  She has the cutest little blue and white checked uniform and navy blue sunhat.  She looks so delicious!!

Home again and name changes...

As I mentioned in my last post, we have been travelling in Yunnan for the last 3 and a half weeks... such a beautiful spot in the world!  We were so lucky to have had such an amazing holiday.  Again, I'm going to refer you to my travel blog for what we got up to... it's worth a read even if I do say so myself!!
www.aboo10.travellerspoint.com

In the blog I kept for my trip, I decided to use pseudonyms for my kids... I have decided that going forward I will do the same in this blog...
So Ellie is now going to be referred to as Jie Jie, and Jamie is now Didi - these names are the Chinese words for Big Sister and Little Brother respectively.

It was lovely travelling, but it was precious coming home again and seeing the kids check out our house just to be sure that everything was still right where it should be!!  And as comfy as ever!!